Soviet Unionhttp://www.desmogblog.com/taxonomy/term/5781/all
enCan You Have a Purely Economic Sputnik?http://www.desmogblog.com/can-you-have-purely-economic-sputnik
<div class="field field-name-field-bimage field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img src="http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/styles/blog_teaser/public/blogimages/sputnik3.jpg?itok=WseXeMcN" width="200" height="164" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>Last night, the president <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/01/25/remarks-president-state-union-address">gave a speech</a> that never directly mentioned the most pressing science-based issue of our time—global warming, climate change. I don’t like being so right in my <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/will-state-union-address-state-planet">prediction</a>: Even I thought he’d say it once or twice at least.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>At the same time, however, he announced a new national love affair with science, innovation, and clean energy, using a playbook that seems right out of the National Academy of Sciences’ now famous 2005 <em><a href="http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11463">Rising Above the Gathering Storm</a> </em>report. And he capped it all off with a line of almost mythic potential: “<span><span>This is our generation’s Sputnik moment.”</span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>Could it really be? And can this approach—save the climate, the country, the economy, and pretty much <em>everything </em>through technological innovation—deliver on its own?<!--break--><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>First, let’s recap what happened following the Soviet launch of Sputnik. It really did create a boom of investment in the sciences in the U.S., which in turn drove prosperity—but it was an investment centrally impelled by fear of an external enemy. As I wrote with Sheril Kirshenbaum in our book <em>Unscientific America</em>:</span></p>
<div style="border: 1px solid LightGrey; margin: 10px; padding: 10px; width: 87%;">The first Earth-orbiting satellite, beeping at us from above, inspired stark fears about our national security and competitiveness: Were we falling behind in technology? Would the Soviets fire on us from the skies, and if they tried, could we stop them? As Senator Lister Hill, an Alabama Democrat, put it, the nation had experienced “a severe blow, some would say a disastrous blow, at America’s self-confidence and at inner prestige in the world.” If the Soviets beat us to the moon, added sci-fi visionary Arthur C. Clarke, “they will have won the solar system, and theirs will be the voice of the future…As it will deserve to be.”</div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>This is the context in which the National Science Foundation’s previously paltry research budget achieved liftoff, and in which <span class="caps">NASA</span> was created to power us to the moon. This is the context in which graduate students were given generous funding—under the National <em>Defense</em> Education Act—to pursue science and engineering careers. This is the context in which we renewed focus on science education in schools.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>Essentially, President Obama wants us to recreate the same sense of urgency, and the same national unity, but without the same fear of another competitor country, unless that country is supposed to be China—which, the President noted, recently “<span><span>became the home to the world’s largest private solar research facility, and the world’s fastest computer.</span></span></span>” Okay, that’s something of a spur…but it is not, historically speaking, a Sputnik. (And, making China into the enemy is a <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-k-gardner/the-sputnik-moment-epidem_b_810376.html">very problematic notion</a>.)</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>Obama wasn’t even speaking in a national security frame last night when he invoked Sputnik. He was speaking in an economic one. The sense of shared threat was displaced from an external <em>other </em>to our own economic problems—joblessness and deficits.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>And that’s the real trick: Is the yearning for national unity, in the wake of Tucson, enough to overcome this chief non-parallel in Obama’s Sputnik analogy? Because undoubtedly, investing in more clean energy research, and more research in general, will spur jobs and innovation. But will we remember to forget our differences in the meantime? Is there some glue that will hold us together? Given the way politics now operate in the U.S., it’s hard to be so optimistic.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>Already, you can see how the push for inspiration and unity requires papering over really serious and divisive problems. Last night, for instance, president Obama didn’t just ignore climate change (which is at least kind of understandable, in the sense that we can’t pass a law to deal with it in the next two years). He also threw together wind, solar, nuclear, natural gas, and even “clean coal” as the clean energy sources that he wants us living off by 2035. Well, it’s a nice notion, but for the moment clean coal remains an oxymoron, and there are <a href="http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1870599,00.html">reasons to suspect</a> it may always be.</span><span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span>Don’t get me wrong—it was a deeply inspirational State of the Union, and I continue to be amazed at just how much this president understands and also adores science. And </span>the Sputnik analogy remains powerful, because it does evoke a moment in the <span class="caps">U.S.</span> past where the country really proved its mettle–as it must again.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span></span>Let’s hope that’s where the analogies begin, rather than where they end.</p></div></div></div><!-- iCopyright Horizontal Tag -->
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<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-14 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/761">china</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/826">State of the Union</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/2151">clean coal</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/2489">National Academy of Sciences</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/2702">obama</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/5771">sputnik</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/5772">innovation</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/5780">Unscientific America</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/5781">Soviet Union</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/5782">Cold War</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/5783">NAS</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/5784">Rising Above the Gathering Storm</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/5785">National Defense Education Act</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/5786">SOTU</a></div></div></div>Wed, 26 Jan 2011 11:57:32 +0000Chris Mooney5085 at http://www.desmogblog.com